Spies, Not Journalists, Died In China Embassy
June 26, 1999
Since this was taken off the web, we’ll just include it here:
Updated 7:13 PM ET June 26, 1999 WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two of the three Chinese killed last month when U.S. bombs hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade were intelligence agents, not journalists as China has said, a senior U.S. official said Saturday.
“It is true that they were not journalists. Two were intelligence agents,” said the official, who asked not to be identified.
The official confirmed a report in the New York Times Friday that two of the three Chinese killed were spies, not journalists. China has said one of those killed worked for the official Xinhua news agency and the other two, a husband-and-wife team, worked for Guangming Daily.
The U.S. official said that the bombs, dropped by U.S. B-2 stealth bombers on May 7, “hit a part of the embassy that was involved in intelligence gathering.”
The incident sparked anti-U.S. protests in China and further strained relations between the two countries.
The United States repeatedly has apologized to China for the bombing, which also wounded about 20 other people. Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering recently traveled to China to explain what happened, but China said the explanation was unconvincing.
The United States has blamed a series of errors, including outdated CIA maps and databases that did not show the embassy had moved to a new location. The intended target, a Yugoslav military procurement office, was located nearby.
Defense Department spokesman Ken Bacon said Thursday an intelligence analyst at the CIA tried to warn colleagues and military officers in Europe that the intended target was not at that location, although he did not know the Chinese embassy was there.
In another development, the leader of Serbia’s main opposition party told a German newspaper he suspected that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic had received an offer of political asylum from China.
“I have indications that Milosevic has received an offer to flee to China, get asylum there and therefore not be handed over to The Hague,” Democratic Party leader Zoran Djindjic said in an interview due to appear in the Sunday newspaper Bild am Sonntag.
Milosevic has been indicted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal, which is based at The Hague in the Netherlands.
